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It’s a chilly, quiet morning, time I’ve waited to savor all week. I have worked more overtime, catching up after a long travel weekend, and milling through the muck of interview rejection. I like to have things status quo, and everything felt off-kilter. At times, it made me forget the smallest things, left me a little catastrophic and slightly depressed. It’s a territory of which I’m familiar – depression – and so I throw myself into overdrive, trying to compensate for the inertia that could settle in. Even photography provided little comfort, and that scared me. I’ve grown to lean on it to get me through difficult times, and now I’m looking at the broader picture: that not one thing can make up for all the things that are biting at you. It’s too much to expect, much like putting all your faith into one person: it’s a big burden to bear. So at the end of a long week, I took my camera with me as we ran errands, no plan in mind (which is out of my comfort zone – as regular readers may know, I like order). I asked a man at a junk shop on Hamilton Avenue if I could take his photo, and he wordlessly slipped back into his shop, gently closing the door behind him. Later in our friend Sheryl’s garden, Jeff picked peppers, tomatoes, chard and sprigs of dill, while I walked around freezing in the cold sun, capturing tangles of overgrowth, getting lost behind the lens for brief moments.

Lisa, sometimes nothing works and the darkness pervades. Probably some of this has to do with the new season and waning of the light. Your photos add light and ways of seeing. Let it pass and don’t hold on, then the light will return again with a new harvest.

Thank you for your kind, comforting words. I read them a few days ago, and now that I’ve come back to them, they give me new light surrounding the darkness. Trying not to be a sad sack this week, it’s getting better.